


Can't Sleep?

by Likesummerrainn



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Comfort, Other, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:36:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24990127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likesummerrainn/pseuds/Likesummerrainn
Summary: Toph is not usually one to stay quiet, but he knows that, for the loudest member of their group, she hides more of herself than anyone else.
Relationships: Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 6
Kudos: 110





	Can't Sleep?

It starts when she’s 12 and he’s 16. 

She walks around the old temple, flexing her hands, moving smaller rocks around to try and calm herself down. He’s sitting nearby, but does not say anything. 

“Can’t sleep?” she asks, throwing a pebble just small enough to get his attention. 

Zuko grunts, but doesn’t say much else. She sits beside him. She knows that the rock he sits on overlooks the edge of the temple and the canyon below them. 

“You?” he finally asks.

Toph shrugs, kicking her feet. 

“Not a great dream,” she mumbles. 

He tenses, she feels that sitting beside him, and wants to ask. 

“Yes, I still have dreams,” she says, answering the question he’s too scared to ask. 

He relaxes and she smiles. 

“What...what’s it like?” he asks. 

“Mostly sounds, sensations. I feel other people around me, but...it’s just fuzzy.” 

She leans back on the rock, splaying her palms out on the surface, and reclining her head back. 

It’s colder down here, and though they haven’t felt the rain that poured overhead, the cold lingers and makes sitting out here more bearable. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” he offers. 

She shakes her head. 

It’s easier not to. He’s just being polite, and she doesn’t expect him to care about it. 

He exhales, and sits up straight. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy the silence, Zuko thinks to himself, but it’s that he can feel something off with her. 

Toph is not usually one to stay quiet, but he knows that, for the loudest member of their group, she hides more of herself than anyone else. 

He recognizes it and wants to offer her the comfort he never got. 

He just doesn’t know how to start. 

“I still have nightmares, you know,” he says, quietly, kicking the dirt beneath his feet. 

“Don’t we all,” she says. 

“My uncle would make me tell him what they were. When I was little. He still tried every now and then when we were traveling, but...I thought I was too old for that. So he would just sit next to me and wait. Sometimes I’d tell him, sometimes I wouldn’t. But he’d always wait, even after I went back to bed.” 

“He’s a good man,” she said, quietly, this time. 

He watches her from the corner of his eyes, and realizes just how tiny she really is. When she fights, her power shrouds her tiny form, but here, in the open night sky Zuko realizes that Toph is still just a kid. 

A kid who ran away from home, from neglectful parents, with no real plan except to get away from everything she’d grown up around. 

He admired that about her. So strong for someone so young. 

She pulled her legs up to her chest and curled into herself, now, her voice softer than he’s ever heard it. 

“It was my parents,” she says, and for once he hears her age in her voice. He doesn’t say anything, but waits for her to continue. “They...I...I found out that they’d died. Someone was telling me that my parents were dead and I...I shouldn’t be upset. I left because I didn’t wanna be there anymore, I didn’t wanna be protected anymore. But…” 

She trails off and her voice breaks, slightly. 

Zuko nods, even though he knows she can’t see it. He doesn’t know what else to do except nod. 

She straightens herself up and continues, 

“I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go back to that life. I _chose_ to leave but...the thought still...I don’t like thinking about it. I don’t wanna think about it.” 

“I know,” he says, quietly. 

He sees small tears fall down her cheek, but she wipes them away quickly and angrily. 

“I don’t care.” 

She states it like she’s trying to prove it to herself. Zuko just nods. 

“But I don’t wanna think about it.” 

Her voice wavers again, and this time she turns herself to Zuko and holds onto him. 

He’s taken aback for a moment at her, hugging him tight around the middle. It’s silent, but her body is racked by sobs and Zuko can’t think of anything else to do except hug her back. 

They stay like that for a while. The first rays of sunshine peak out over tops of the canyon, and she starts to breathe easy again. One hand still grips his shirt tight, even as she pulls her head back up. He rests a hand on her shoulder, 

“Thank you,” she mumbles, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. Zuko smiles, 

“Anytime.” 

She leaves quietly, but Zuko stays in his spot, laying back against the rock, closing his eyes. 

He looks over, after a moment, at Toph who’s curled into a ball on the ground, sleeping soundly. 

He might get a few minutes of sleep in before everyone else wakes up, but he doesn’t mind. At least she was able to fall back asleep. 

* * *

She’s 18 now, and Zuko is 22 and has asked her to join her security detail. She already spends most of her time in the capital as it is, he might as well offer her a real reason to stay. 

“Can’t sleep?” he asks. She shakes her head. 

She’s sitting outside the palace, leaning against a pillar, a small chunk of metal in her hands bending into different shapes. She’s doing it without giving it too much thought and Zuko is somehow still impressed with this. 

“Mind if I join you?” he asks. He waits until he sees her nod before sitting beside her. 

They don’t talk, but sit and enjoy the warm summer air around them. 

“Bad dream?” she asks him, finally. 

He inhales slowly, 

“Something like that,” he says. 

He doesn’t have many bad dreams anymore. Not like he used to, at least. 

They’re different now, their dreams. 

For him, it’s just flashes of lightning coming from all sides, but his hands are like bricks and he can’t stop them. He wakes up from the tremors, the memory of lightning passing through him. 

For her, she’s hanging onto Sokka’s hand, her fingers slipping through them, nothing but the ocean below her. She wakes from the feeling of falling, even though she sleeps on the ground. She wakes to stop the plummet. 

Even now, all the way at the top of the palace stairs, she places her palms face down to remind herself that she’s on solid ground, that she’s not falling. 

He knows what her dreams are, now. He doesn’t say anything, though. That’s for her. He waits until she’s ready to speak and listens to her, though it’s the same every time. 

She tells him, he listens. 

“I think this time I actually fell into the water,” she says, finally. 

He smiles to himself, just a little. 

“I think the lightning hit my mouth this time,” he lied. He knew she would know he lied, and the small punch to his arm tells him as much. 

But she’s smiling. 

“How long have you been up?” he asks. She shrugs, 

“An hour?” she offers. 

He nods. From the corner of his eye he sees a servant standing in the corner and waves for them to come over. He sets down a tray with a teapot, steaming, and two mugs. 

Toph turns to face him now, her eyes closed as she inhales the aroma. That brings a bigger smile from her. He pours it and hands her a mug before taking one for himself. 

“Iroh’s blend,” she notes. 

“I figured we deserved something good right now,” he says. He waits until she takes the first sip before taking his own. 

It seems to relax her a little more, her shoulders drop and leans back against the pillar. 

“Do you think they’ll ever stop?” she asks, quietly. 

“I hope so,” he replies, his own voice dropping low. 

She nods, 

“It still feels so real,” she says. Her voice wavers now, small tears pooling in the corner of her eyes. She grips her mug tighter and brings it to her face, but doesn’t take a sip. She lets it warm her face and takes comfort in it like that, too. 

Zuko follows suit. 

It helps. 

Finally, he speaks, 

“I think they’ll stop,” he says. “I don’t know when, but I know that they won’t last forever.” 

She doesn’t say anything. 

“Maybe you can get Aang to work some spirit world magic to get them to stop, if all else fails,” he tries as a joke. 

It gets a laugh out of her, even if it wasn’t the best joke, but it doesn’t matter. 

“I wonder if the energy bending can work on dreams,” she says. 

They’re quiet again, turning their attention on their tea, now. 

“Do they still feel real for you?” she asks. 

Zuko doesn’t say anything, and Toph takes that as his answer. 

She sighs, and he hears the crack in her voice again. 

“Katara taught me some breathing exercises,” he starts, setting his mug down. “When I wake up from those nightmares, I do those and they help me.” 

She turns towards him, 

“Would you like to try them?” he asks. She sets her mug down and shifts herself so she’s sitting directly across from him, legs crossed. 

He walks her through them, and they sit there until the sun comes up, breathing and letting it all out. She’s still so young, he thinks, watching her as she stops herself from crying again. So he tries to fill those moments with stories, get her advice on matters that have already been settled, and ask her to bend some of the metal around them. 

As the sun rises, Toph falls asleep on his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his arm, as Zuko drifts in and out of sleep to check on her. 

She does not stir after that, and he feels relief. 

* * *

She’s 37 and he’s 41 and Toph is visiting him at the palace once more. They label the meeting “official business” but those matters were taken care of hours ago. 

Now, they sit on the floor of the council room, leaning against the table in the middle of it, tea in hands. 

“Tell me about it,” he finally says. 

It is the first time they speak in almost thirty minutes. 

“Really bad,” she says, followed by another sip. 

He nods. 

They have both felt loss, twice over now. It felt as though they had finally settled into their lives, into their roles in this new world they’d built together, and yet… 

“I can sense both of them in my dreams now,” she says. She is older now, and it is evident in her voice. Her voice does not break over words, nor fall quiet like when she was younger. 

Now, her voice is strained, exhausted, and hoarse. 

“Iroh, once, too,” she says. 

He smiles at that, 

“He told me,” he says. 

She has a small smile on her face, too, but it does not last. He notices her hand resting against her stomach more and more and he realizes…

“I miss him, too,” he says, finally. Her hand moves from her stomach and clenches into a fist. They both know who he’s talking about. 

“It’s not fair,” she says. 

For a split second, he sees the face of the 12 year old girl who held onto him after a nightmare, crying against his chest. He hears the voice of a scared kid, so far from home, dropped in the middle of a war. 

His heart breaks. But he doesn’t move. 

He offers his arm out to her, and she takes it and rests her head against his shoulder. 

This is a routine for them, now. One that he’d hoped had been long forgotten, and traded in for a better, calmer life. But it does not stop them from falling back into old habits. 

She does not cry, this time, but still can feel her relax against him. 

“Did he know?” he asks, cautiously. 

She pauses, and then shakes her head. 

He rests his cheek on the top of her head. 

“Toph,” he starts, gently squeezing her hand, “if you need anything…” 

He trails off. 

He doesn’t know what he can offer her that she would accept. He doesn’t know what he can say to her that would help in this moment. 

“I’m here, you know,” he decides to say, “whenever.” 

She nods slowly, but doesn’t move. 

Their tea gets cold, but they stay like that until she’s ready to move again. No one bothers them, and for that time, they both take solace in their company. 

Two friends, grieving together. 

Finally, she stands first and holds out a hand to help him up. He takes it, still caught off guard by how strong she is. 

She takes his arm again and together, they walk out of the council chambers, talking quietly about nothing in particular, both their voices quiet and a little hoarse. 

* * *

She’s 91 now and sleep comes easier than ever before. It is the only place where she finds true peace. 

She finds herself walking paths she remembers, down roads she’s paced in her dreams over and over again. She’s learned to control her dreams, to take herself where she most wants to be. 

Tonight, she finds herself walking the grounds of the old air temple once more, listening for him. 

“Bad dream?” she hears behind her. 

She smiles, 

“Not this time,” she replies, turning to face the spirit.

“It’s good to see you, Toph,” he says. His voice is younger, lighter, she notes. Like how it sounded when they were kids. 

She exhales, 

“It’s good to hear you, too, Zuko,” she says with a smirk, getting a small laugh out of him. 

She feels his arm brush up against hers and she falls into an old habit, and wraps both her arms around his. 

They walk this old path she’s brought them to, and for once they talk about something other than nightmares. 

**Author's Note:**

> I.......don't really know who dies when in canon so let's just assume I'm right in this scenario. Even if I don't want to be.
> 
> Anyways their dynamic isn't given a lot of attention and I wanted to write something for them so, here we are.


End file.
